Uniform mixtures of materials, often in the forms of suspensions or emulsions, are used in a wide variety of applications. In the life sciences, for example, homogeneous suspensions of magnetically responsive particles are commonly used as part of cell, polypeptide, and polynucleotide purification protocols. In the case of high-throughput nucleic acid purification, numerous samples including genomic DNA or RNA, mRNA, or amplification products are typically isolated or otherwise purified in the wells of microplates or in other containers in processes that involve the use of magnetic bead suspensions. Many cell-based applications also utilize aliquots of uniform cell density, for example, to screen vast compound libraries for pharmaceutical candidates. Homogeneous mixtures of reagents are also used in numerous biological and non-biological processes, such as in nucleic acid amplification reactions, cell culturing procedures, and inorganic chemical synthetic schemes, among many others. Uniformly mixed materials are also used in a variety of other contexts as well.